


Stay Close to Me

by ferrisu



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Again, Angst with a Happy Ending, Complete, Dramatic running in the snow, Fluff and Angst, Just Yuuri being Yuuri, M/M, Minor Injuries, Victor with a K, Viktor and Yuuri get it on, Well his face does, Yuuri reunites with the ice, not even that angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-04-25 10:35:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22295023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferrisu/pseuds/ferrisu
Summary: In the aftermath of the Grand Prix Final, Yuuri is hit with the realization that even though he beat Viktor's personal best, he still fell short of gold. His old spiralling ways surface again, but this time his coach is there to fish him out of the deep end...~/~“You picked me.” He breathed into the thin stretch of space between their lips, where it bloomed into existence, a small cloud of white and whispers. His eyes closed, he dared not open them to see Yuuri too far, too out of reach. He could only focus on the hands still gripping the back of his neck, his shoulder, the breath warm on his lips, and all too much not his own. Not enough.“No,” Answered Yuuri, and had Viktor opened his eyes, he would have seen the pleading there, the outreach, a hand just waiting to be taken, “You picked me.”
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri's Face/The Ice, Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Kudos: 44





	1. Part 1 - Where Yuuri Falls Again

"Just one more time." He wheezed out the words, his chest heaving, sweat glistening on his forehead. Shacking out his fingerless gloves that had become sodden from sweat, Yuuri whipped off his brow, pushing back his dark strands from his eyes, not unlike his competition style. He swallowed thickly at the thought, quickly sliding to the edge of the rink, unzipping his jacket. He could feel the open blisters rubbing against the inside of his skates, a familiar burn he had grown accustomed to over the last few hours. Slipping his gloves back on, he threw a glance out the Ice Castle Rink windows only to see night had fallen. He hadn't even noticed.

Reaching the banister, he shrugged off his sweater and threw it onto the benches that lined the arena. A flashing light caught his attention. He'd left his cellphone in his duffle bag which he'd abandoned earlier. The light flashed again, meaning to notify him of a text alert or a call. With a grimace, he pushed off the banister, skating back to the center of the ice. He didn't want to think about it.

Bunching the long sleeves of his shirt at his elbows, he took a stabilizing breathe. His legs shook beneath him from the simple effort of standing on his skates. The cold air of the rink burned his lungs.

"Again." He whispered.

He'd abandoned doing any jumps an hour or two ago, having met the ice face first in rather sad attempts at quads one too many times, sporting a series of small bruises along his jaw, his elbows, his knees, for his efforts. Instead, he pushed off into the first step sequence of his season's short program, skipping ahead of the intro in his head. The movements were ingrained in his body, dancing across the ice off of muscle memory rather than intellectual attempt. Thinking was the last thing he wanted to do at the moment.

The sharp sounds of his blades scraping the ice, and the soft silences as he glided across, echoed in the empty arena. He relished in the cold of the rink against his skin, his skating creating a breeze, cold friction relieving the heat of exertion. Step, twist, repeat, change directions, spot the turn. The edge of his blade caught the ice, and he stumbled, his hand touching the ice before he could regain his balance.

And he was back the grand prix, the ice like a freezing burn under his fingers, one that had cemented his silver medal.

He pushed harder, speeding through the next step sequence at twice the speed, the tempo of the music playing in his head increasing to match his erratic movements. Twist, step, step, turn, again. Another near miss as his ankle gave a lurch against a too-quick cross-over.

He could hear the startled gasps of the crowd, the burn of embarrassment creeping up his cheeks.

No, he struck his blade against the ice and propelled himself further down the ice, loosing himself in a frantic step sequence that no longer belonged to this season's program. Falling into the groove of a jump preparation, he remembered where he knew this choreography from. His first grand prix, the one he had miserably lost at. He felt the icy burn travel from his fingertips to his knees that had hit the ice after those faithful jumps, to his hip when he'd fallen out of his combination spin. Yuuri shook his head as if to dispel the memory physically, running a shaking hand through the wayward strands that fells into his eyes stinging with sweat. His skates hit the ice harder with every jerking push as he threw himself into a rapid sprint down to the other end of the rink. His legs burned with the effort, his lungs struggling to keep up. He heaved a heavy breath and lined up a jump, anything to get the sound of bated breaths and unearned applause out of his mind. His toe pick hit the ice and he was airborne. Arms tucked tight, legs wrapped around one another, he counted his rotations, breath stuck in his chest.

One. He’s a kid again, too shy to talk to the girl with the chocolate colored hair who skated like the music sang to her.

Two. His first competition, he misses the warm up because he's crying in the parking lot from the anxiety eating at him.

Three. He's cradling his head in his hands at the kiss and cry after his disastrous performance at the grand prix the season prior, his coach is speaking in soothing tones he can't hear.

Four. He's beat the world record set by Viktor Nikiforov, his very own coach, but he still falls short of gold.

Again.

No matter how hard he tries.

He always falls short.

"Yuuri."

His fourth spin was under rotated and the ice caught his edge, sending him falling hard towards the unforgiving surface. He threw his hands out reflexively and the shock of the impact ran through his right wrist like electricity. It buckled and his shoulder meet the ice next, the brunt of the impact sending him sprawling onto his back. He'd tucked in his chin to avoid smacking his head yet again and lay motionless on the ice for a second, tense against the impending pain. There always was a moment there, where the adrenaline completely overwrote the agony. It never lasted long enough. Too quickly, it left his system and sharp pain radiated up his arm. His muscles, taunt with over exertion, also thought it the right time to be heard. With a groan, he let his head fall back against the ice and released the tension holding him stiff, the cold a stark contrast against his overheating head, his limbs thankful for the rest. This was it, the moment he ruined his career with a dumb mistake in practice, injuring himself without hope of ever returning competitively. It wouldn't be so bad. He had done well. Never good enough. But not everyone got to win. Maybe he was simply destined to never taste what gold medals felt like on chapped lips.

Any remaining strength, earned from his years of training, his natural endurance, seeped out of him, and he closed his eyes against the harsh neon lights that illuminated the rink. He felt the sudden urge to cry, but found himself unable to. Thoughts of dehydration plagued him momentarily, but he couldn't move if he tried, a mixture of exhaustion both physical and emotional. He couldn't take off his skates, gather his things, and face his family with a smile, not when a dark pit ate at his chest like a starved animal.

"Yuuri!"

His eyes snapped open at the familiar voice. The sound of frantic footsteps reached his ears put he couldn't fight gravity hard enough to lift his head. His breathes crystallized above his lips in intricate misty patterns, and he wondered if tears would turn to ice if given enough time. He closed his eyes. Knees hit the ice beside his head and shadows fell onto his eyelids. Something soft brushed his forehead, and supple, worn leather cupped his cheek. He winced as long fingers accidentally pressed on bruised skin, and the warmth the hands had brought left him as swiftly as it had appeared.

Clothing rustled and he heard a phone dialing. He couldn't bring himself to face his coach, not like this, lying defeated on the ice that had taken everything from him.

"Hello? I need an ambulance at the Hasetsu ice castle arena -"

Ambulance…

"What? Viktor!" Yuuri practically yelled, all self-loathing momentarily forgotten. Jerking up into a sitting position, he spread his hands wide, waving, as if the motion would dissuade his coach's actions.

Viktor's eyes flashed, the terror lending itself to shock, transitioning to a cold glare. It shown with the kind of furor that stemmed from concern, filling them with tears. Yuuri knew then he should say something, anything, to comfort the man, but Viktor's frosty, worried glare had him nailed to the spot. Those ocean blue eyes had frozen over, and Yuuri was thrown head first into the icy landscape.

"Never mind. He was just pretending to be dead." Viktor coolly informed the operator, his voice like poisoned arrows, each imbedding themselves into Yuuri's already beaten and bruised heart. His coach finished the call with as much anger as one could hit a button, the tone ringing strangely loud in the empty arena, in the empty space between them. Viktor turned away from Yuuri, his bangs hiding his expression.

"Dead?" Yuuri gaped once his wits returned, finally able to gather his thoughts when icy blue eyes weren’t digging into his soul anymore, "I wasn't pretending to be dead!" But Viktor either hadn't heard the startled defense, or was ignoring him, as he stood in his city boots and started walking off the ice. "Viktor, wait! I-" but Yuuri’s wrist buckled as he tried to push himself to his feet, and a pained groan escaped his lips as heat ran up his arm, radiating from the offending joint. Had he been looking at Viktor, he would have noticed the moment’s hesitation, the faintest of rustle of his long overcoat. But he’d closed his eyes and ground his teeth against the pain plaguing him. Stubbornly, he used his other arm to climb onto shaking legs and cradled his injured wrist to his chest. Unsteady, from the exhaustion, from the shock, he skated after his coach who’d already reached the gate which was still thrown open. The sound of his skates against the ice grated as his ears, jarring against the loud silence that stretched between them. As he approached, Yuuri noticed a slight tremble in Viktor's wide shoulders.

"Viktor..." He started, his good hand reaching out to touch his arm, to prompt him to face him. But before his fingers could brush his coach's characteristic coat, Viktor spun around, shoving away Yuuri's outstretched hand with a great sweeping motion. Yuuri, caught by surprised, practically fell back from the trust. He managed to stay standing out of sheer will and the beginnings of annoyance. Viktor's whole body was heaving with barely controlled breaths, his chin shaking, eyes obscured by his long bangs. Yuuri's gaze followed a single tear, as it crested on his coach's chin, and fell, crashing onto the ice at his feet. The annoyance evaporated. "Viktor-"

"I called you." The words were thrown out into the void between them, life lines attached to nothing.

"I didn't hear -" Yuuri protested feebly.

"All day. When you weren’t at breakfast, I let it slide, assumed you slept in. But by lunch, I checked your room and you weren’t there. I checked Minako's, but she hadn't seen you since the welcome home party after the grand prix." It sounded painful for Viktor to articulate the words, as if his jaw had been clamped shut too strongly for too long, as if the muscles didn't know how to move to form words anymore. His accent was harsher than usual, as if is emotions were felt in Russian and it was physically demanding to translate them for Yuuri’s sake.

"I waited at the studio with Minako, and I called, but you didn't answer either of us. You have barely said anything since we got back from Barcelona." Yuuri cringed at that. He hadn't been that distant, had he? He'd just needed a bit of time to regroup, but he wasn't pushing anyone away. He didn't mean to. “Do you know how worried everyone has been?”

Yuuri tried to cut in, to explain, that he had needed a second to digest, to breathe, to come to terms with everything that had happened, not just at the Grand Prix, but in the last few months, since Viktor had showed up and decided to turn his life upside down. The last competition had brought a whole chapter of his life to close, and now everything was up in the air, his future as a competitive skater, his future with Viktor as his coach. He just wanted to lose himself in his short program and pretend it had never ended, pretend the scores had never been settled, pretend he had never let gold slip through frost-burned fingertips.

"I waited, and when you didn't answer, when you didn't come, I called Yuuko but she said she's closed the rink hours ago. She hadn't seen you either."

"I have a key..." Yuuri supplied softly, but even that felt empty.

"I went back to the hot springs, you still weren’t back, no one had heard from you. You’ve been distant for days. Even Minako was worried sick. I thought… I got Yuuko to give me the keys. I wanted to…” Let off some steam, lose yourself in the familiarity of skating, not think, for one second, as you soar through the air and land an impossible jump. Yuuri had come for the same reasons. “I was so...” Worried? But the seconds dragged on and no words filled the silence. Viktor searched Yuuri’s eyes for something he didn’t find. He looked away, his lips pressed into a harsh line. “Do you know what time it is?"

"What?" Yuuri was caught off guard by the question, but from Viktor’s clenched fists, took the hint to answer. He threw an unsure glance out the windows, at the darkened skies that gave no sure indication of the time. "Euh, like 10pm?"

"It's 2 in the morning." The words were flat, but they sent Yuuri reeling.

"No, that's not... That's impossible." He defended himself. He’d lost so much time with his mindless repetition of his short program, trying to drill that jump into his very bones. He hadn’t even noticed the time slip by. Viktor’s eyes landed on his again, burning with newly stroked embers.

“How long have you been here?” The words were iron.

“A- A few hours, no that-”

“When’s the last time you took a break?” Grey eyes were steel.

“I… I didn’t really-” That was the wrong thing to say, he saw the fury bloom in his coach’s eyes like flowers in the middle of winter, unexpected, terribly resilient, tempestuous. For a second, had Yuuri not known Viktor better, had they been strangers facing off, in a different situation, in different circumstances, Yuuri would have been scared. But he knew Viktor, the other face of the coin they shared, and he knew he would never hurt him. There was nothing to fear in the tundra of his eyes, because he was not on the receiving end, he was the source. Viktor knew it too, because his shoulders sagged, his eyes softened as the ice melted to tears, and he brought shaking fingers to pull at his silver bangs.

“You’re hurting me Yuuri.” 


	2. Part 2 - Where Yuuri Cries

Yuuri didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to say. His heart ached with a fierceness he hadn’t felt since Viktor—the dog—had died during the Grand Prix finale last season. It was poisonous, coursing through his veins, infecting every corner of his mind and body, with a frozen kind of terror of the inevitable.

“I don’t mean to.” He whispered, as if the words could not be shared in any other way than in secrecy, here, as they stood alone at the edge of the ice that had taken everything from them. Viktor’s eyes were sad as his lips pulled into something ironic that should have resembled a smile.

“I know.” He said, and Yuuri could feel the situation slipping through his fingers like water. He could feel his coach receding back into the untouchable Viktor Nikiforov, five-time gold medalist, the legend. Yuuri reached out the only way he knew how.

His fingers carefully brushed back Viktor’s bangs, he almost fell forwards in arms that came up to hold him on instinct, as if their sole purpose had only ever been to bring him close and never let go. And Yuuri surprised him, the only way he knew how.

Viktor’s lips tasted like tears, and Yuuri couldn’t tell whose they were. They were warm, supple, they felt perfect, almost too much so, against his rough chapped ones. It felt unfair, for Viktor to hold more beauty in a single piece of his body than Yuuri felt he would produce in a lifetime. It was so terribly unfair, even, that Yuuri felt it his duty to take a piece of that beauty for himself if simply to right a karmic balance somewhere in the universe. Viktor’s lips could cause a tsunami with their unfairness, or a flood. They could kill a man, simply by existing. And the way they moved against Yuuri’s first in shocked, open-mouthed stupor, then in quick, long, responsive strokes, would surely kill him.

Yuuri’s hand came up to cup the back of the blonde’s head, to pull him down the half an inch that separated them, even when he wore his skates. And Viktor’s hands curled around the younger man’s frame, pulling him flush against the front of his coat, and sweater, and shirt, and God, there were simply too many clothes between them. It must be illegal, to separate two bodies so, with so much linen and cotton and…

Yuuri was pulling back and Viktor’s thoughts scrambled if only to focus once more on a single matter: why was he moving away? Why was Yuuri always moving away? He wasn’t having it anymore. He’d gotten a silver medal at the Grand Prix. He’d forced Viktor back to Russia to see his pup. He’d declared his theme love on national television. He’d kissed him back that day on the ice, in front of all the cameras. He’d skated to Eros in no way any man should. He’d skated his program.

“You picked me.” He breathed into the thin stretch of space between their lips, where it bloomed into existence, a small cloud of white and whispers. His eyes closed, he dared not open them to see Yuuri too far, too out of reach. He could only focus on the hands still gripping the back of his neck, his shoulder, the breath warm on his lips, and all too much not his own. Not enough.

“No,” Answered Yuuri, and had Viktor opened his eyes, he would have seen the pleading there, the outreach, a hand just waiting to be taken, “You picked me.”

His lips crashed into Viktor’s and the shock of the impact sent him back a step, catching the lip of the rink, and tumbling through the open gate onto the ground between the benches. Yuuri fell forward onto Viktor, his lips leaving his for the instant it took to sound out a surprised gasp before finding them again. They sealed into a kiss with fervour, Viktor’s bangs brushing along the ridge of Yuuri’s nose, the eyes clamped shut as if to push out the rest of the world. They could find their way blind, relying on touch alone.

Viktor’s hands ran up Yuuri’s sides, his shirt catching and lifting with the movement, Viktor’s leather gloves trailing across his bare skin. Yuuri’s were pushing aside the lapels of his coach’s coat, trying desperately to lessen the distance between their bodies. It was a team effort, each man gripping the other with matched feverish need, as if finally coming to terms and agreement with each other one this one thing. Yuuri was a wreck, most likely irreparable. Viktor was unreachable, obsolete in his goals. Their vices were unmatched and terrible in ways neither would ever fully comprehend. But the way Viktor’s tongue ran along Yuuri’s bottom lip seemed to lessen the weight in his abdomen. And the hand running through Viktor’s usually picture perfect hair had a grounding effect he never would have anticipated. The world could wait for this moment. It could wait as long as they needed.

Yuuri sat back, straddling his coach’s hips long enough to pull off the shirt Viktor had tugged to his shoulders, revealing a lithe and defined chest, curtesy of Viktor’s brutal training regime. Viktor felt in that moment that perhaps his greatest achievement as a coach had been sculpting that chest, his gaze roving the unmarked planes. He’d done damn fine work at it. His gloved finger ran in circles along Yuuri’s abdomen until a violent shiver cut through the bare-chested man’s body. Viktor looked up then, and caught Yuuri’s eye. Something along the lines of pain and hunger mixed in his dark gaze, rousing Viktor’s blood to a thrumming frequency he wasn’t sure if he found uncomfortable or delicious. Arousal, he decided on. Yuuri bit his bottom lip in a way that made Viktor’s blood rush south and he couldn’t last another second. He reached up and tugged on Yuuri’s nape, pulling the man flush against his chest once more to ravage his worried lip. He massaged it with his tongue before flicking it under Yuuri’s front teeth, eliciting a grown from the younger man. The effect was almost instantaneous and Viktor became once again much too aware of the amount of clothes that still separated them.

“Yuuri,” he managed to breathe out, and this brought the other man’s actions to an immediate standstill. His eyes flickered upwards, worry suddenly lacing the lust that still held them half-lidded.

“Do you want to stop?” His words almost tore a hole through Viktor’s heart, and for a second he seriously considered just staying on the dirty floor of the area, melted ice slowly seeping into his coat, his deliriously beautiful protégé straddling his hips in the lewdest display he’d ever had the pleasure to lay his eyes upon. Eros, by God.

“I want to continue this elsewhere,” he answered instead, raining in the need that throbbed between his legs, positioned precariously beneath where Yuuri now sat. “Somewhere with condoms, and lube, and preferably less AC.”

Yuuri went bright scarlet and for a second Viktor thought he might have misinterpreted the events that had transpired in the last few minutes, but a single look at the bare-chested man sitting on him reminded him otherwise. Yuuri had kissed him first, after all. But a confident nod stole the air from his chest, so he only nodded back, slowly pushing himself up onto his elbows, then into a sitting position. Yuuri slid down from his hips and onto his thighs and it took every ounce of self-control Viktor had not to moan as Yuuri grinded against a most sensitive of areas. Yuuri looked up innocently, but a glint in his eye and a quirk of his lips gave his pretend innocence away. The man knew everything that he was doing to Viktor, and he was revelling in it. Viktor didn’t have the presence of mind to determine if that was even hotter than the shy virgin act he was putting on. 

“You’ll need to put a shirt back on.” He said, at a lost for any other words. Yuuri ignored him completely, and swooped in to capture Viktor’s lips again, soft but strong in his ministrations. This kiss wasn’t the temperature of the sun, as some of the others had. This one was cool, level-headed, controlled. This kiss was a decision, not a heated admission, half concussed and scared of losing something dear to him. This was a promise, and Viktor answered in kind.

Shirts were quickly, and begrudgingly, put back on. Skates were hurriedly swapped for boots, and the night air embraced them like long-lost lovers, which, perhaps, they were. Yuuri was practically running down the street, Viktor hot on his heels, a smile so bright it lightened the night sky. Yuuri couldn’t remember anything he had ever seen look so stunning. There was laughter painting both their lips, and stray snowflakes catching in their hair as they raced through the side streets and alleyways, taking shortcuts through a night market, and another through a park, snow crunching under their soles. Viktor’s hand was clenched so tightly in Yuuri’s that he was probably losing circulation, but he couldn’t complain, the prospect of having that hand clenched around another part of his body was monopolizing his every thought, so much so that he didn’t even realize when Yuuri’s fervent chase through the streets of Hatsetsu came to an end on the bridge, and he practically walked right into the shorter man.

A car drove past them, and for a moment they were bathed in the headlights, two people, standing a hairbreadth apart, on a bridge in the middle of the night, surrounded by the soft silence falling snow seemed to carry. It rushed by, and they were left in the street lamp’s yellow glow, casting a soft circle around them, in an intimate fashion. Their breaths came out in quick staccatos, white puffs forming on their lips as they recoverd from their sprint. Yuuri faced away from Viktor, looking out onto the water, his hand still grasping Viktor’s tightly. Viktor could see but the side of Yuuri’s face, could discern the smile still pulling at his lips, but the moonlight caught something else. 

Yuuri turned then, facing Viktor, who could finally tell what was shining so on his lover’s cheeks: tears. Though a smile strained his features, tears cascade down his cheeks, cresting on his chin before falling to his coat and scarf. His eyes brimmed with them, thousands of stars shinning in the moonlight. If Viktor had to pin point a singular moment when he fell in love with Yuuri, it would be this one.

“I don’t know why I’m crying.” Yuuri admitted. His other hand coming up to harshly wipe at his face. Viktor caught his hand, pulling it to his chest instead. There’s a pause as Yuuri took a rattling breathe, and looked out again at the water before bracing to swing his gaze to Viktor. The man he saw there looked back at him openly, raw. He was no longer unreachable, he was holding him almost roughly. Touching him. He was here. “I lost.” He whispered into the night air, a confession for the snow, for Viktor.

“You did.” Said Viktor, and this shocked Yuuri who was ready for another flurry of excuses and praise for his silver medal. He was almost hurt, but didn’t get the time to muster up the emotion before the next words left Viktor’s lips, “it’s okay”.

Yuuri’s shoulder’s slumped, and his lips finally caved, curling down into a frown as a sob escaped his chest. Viktor didn’t pull Yuuri to him, he let him catch his breath, cry for a second and regain his composure. He should have felt uncertain, awkward, the way he felt when Yuuri had broken down in the parking lot, but he didn’t. He held on to the man’s hands tightly, standing still and stoically, and waited for the other to calm down before reaching out a gloved hand, and gently brushing away his tears. 

“It’s okay.”

Their lips met again, chilled by the cold, searching in the darkness for each other, deftly aware of the distance as it closes between them. Viktor tasted of mint and chocolate and Yuuri tasted of sweat and Gatorade and neither minded. They fold into each other like paper dolls and stood there, still and strong against the cool winds that battered the bridge, their lips warmed by the contact and friction.

Yuuri would cry again, once they had reached Viktor’s room and pealed the clothes from their bodies and warmed from the cold, in more ways than one. Viktor would wait for his tears to dry and whisper a few words, not of comfort, but of understanding, or attempt do to so. Attempts which Yuuri was deeply thankful for. In the darkness of Viktor’s room, they would reach out for each other and learn the shape of each other’s bodies outside of the rink, beneath the training clothes and costumes. Viktor would learn the taste of Yuuri’s tears, but also the feel of his smile against the crook of his neck. Yuuri would find Viktor present, responsive, always within reach, even when the night had wound down and they lay next to each other. He could stretch out his hand, and no matter the depth of Viktor’s slumber, he would reach back, and curl along Yuuri’s side in answer.

They lay that way until morning crested the horizon, which was really not much time at all considering how late they had stayed out, but neither worried much for the coming hours. Yuuri would have some explaining to do to account for his absence the day before, and Viktor might have to explain the bruised state of his neck where apparent bite marks would remain visible for the next few days. But neither would stray too far from the other, not again. They would face the upcoming challenges together, hand in hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part dos, Val, you know this one already, I have nothing else to tell you except I'm sorry I'm not writing my lab report right now, stop looking at me like that.


	3. Part 3 - Where Yuuri Laughs

The next morning was dull pains and groans on behalf of the black-haired skater. Injuries that had miraculously been forgotten the night before to allow for worthier endeavours now became more than noticeable in the paling fervour of last night. With the sun seeping in through the cracked shutters, and the bruises turning a bright purple, Yuuri rolled away from the warmth of Viktor’s embrace to groan loudly into a pillow, regretting the action immediately as his inflamed jaw ached almost tauntingly.

“Yuuri?” Inquired Viktor through a haze of sleep and dreams. Yuuri’s gut jerked at the gravelly timber of his lover’s voice in the morning. It had a quality Yuuri though he could get very used to. However, the time was not for languid appreciation of Viktor’s naked chest and barely covered sex. Dear God, Yuuri needed to invest in thicker covers.

“Viktor…” Mumbled back the skater, bringing his arm up to push himself out of bed, only to realize his wrist had swollen to twice its size, a swirl of blue and purple and molten red. “Can you drive me to the hospital?”

That snapped Viktor right out of his late morning daze as he sat up in bed with a quickness that sent his mind reeling. The covers tumbled down his chest and pooled in his thigh, doing nothing to shield Yuuri’s innocent eyes from a morning problematic, had the situation been any different, he would have gladly helped solve. Viktor’s silver eyes snapped to Yuuri’s face, and grew wide as he took in the damage: the row of bruises along his jaw, the swollen wrist he cradled to his chest, the crooked, guilty smile gracing his chapped lips. Idiot. He said as much. Stood, grabbed his keys, was practically out the door when Yuuri lunged across the bed and latched onto his wrist.

“Viktor! Viktor wait!” Pleaded Yuuri, tugging on Viktor’s wrist until he faced him. Viktor turned on his heel, eyes like steel.

“What? I was bad enough of a coach not to bring you last night.” He snapped, guilt pooling in his stomach, but Yuuri’s laugh tore him from his swirling thoughts.

“You… You need clothes, Viktor.” He managed through chuckles. Viktor stilled, and slowly looked down, finding himself, quite in fact, very naked. He felt a laugh bubbling inside his own chest. His gaze fixed itself once more on Yuuri’s smiling face, illuminated by the grin that split it.

“I don’t know, do I really? I think a lot of people would appreciate me driving around like this.” He teased, and watched as Yuuri’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, his laughter morphing to a low moan.

“I’m not sure I’d be okay with that.” He answered, feeling Viktor walk back towards the bed, one knee setting down beside his hip, a fringe of hair tickling his bare shoulder.

“Why not Yuuri? Would you be jealous?” The words were whispered into the skin at the crook of his neck and Yuuri inhaled sharply.

“Viktor.”

“Yes?”

“Can you save that thought? Just long enough for an emergency room visit?”

“Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And finally, part 3, which Val forced me to write because she thought I was just down right evil to not have tied up the loose end of this poor small child getting hurt, and thought it would be hilarious to have Viktor drive him to the hospital the next day. There. You have it now.


End file.
